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NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

No. CCLXIY.

SEPTEMBER-OCTOBEK, 1878.

I.

KIN BEYOND SEA.

It is now nearly half a century since the works of De Tocque-
ville and De Beaumont, founded upon personal observation,
brought the institutions of the United States effectually within
the circle of European thought and interest. They were co-
operators, but not upon an equal scale. De Beaumont belongs to
the class of ordinary though able writers: De Tocqueville was
the Burke of his age, and his treatise upon America may well be
regarded as among the best books hitherto produced for the po-
litical student of all times and countries.

But higher and deeper than the concern of the Old World at
large in the thirteen colonies, now grown into thirty-eight States,
besides eight Territories, is the special interest of England in
their condition and prospects.

I do not speak of political controversies between them and us,
which are happily, as I trust, at an end. I do not speak of the
vast contribution which from year to year, through the opera-
tions of a colossal trade, each makes to the wealth and comfort
of the other ; nor of the friendly controversy, which in its own
place it might be well to raise, between the leanings of America
to protectionism, and the more daring reliance of the old country
upon free and unrestricted intercourse with all the world ; nor

vol. cxxvu.-— no. 264 13

180 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

of the menace which, in the prospective development of her re-
sources, America offers to the commercial preeminence of Eng-
land. On this subject I will only say that it is she alone who, at
a coming time, can, and probably will, wrest from us that com-
mercial primacy. We have no title, I have no inclination, to
murmur at the prospect. If she acquires it, she will make the
acquisition by the right of the strongest ; but, in this instance,
the strongest means the best. She will probably become what
we are now, the head servant in the great household of the
world, the employer of all employed, because her service will
be the most and ablest. "We have no more title against her than
Venice, or Genoa, or Holland, has had against us. One great
duty is entailed upon us, which we, unfortunately, neglect — the
duty of preparing, by a resolute and sturdy effort, to reduce our
public burdens, in preparation for a day when we shall probably
have less capacity than we have now to bear them.

Passing by all these subjects, with their varied attractions, I
come to another, which lies within the tranquil domain of politi-
cal philosophy. The students of the future, in this department,
will have much to say in the way of comparison between Ameri-
can and British institutions. The relationship between these two
is unique in history. It is always interesting to trace and to com-
pare constitutions, as it is to compare languages ; especially in
such instances as those of the Greek states and the Italian re-
publics, or the diversified forms of the feudal system in the
different countries of Europe. But there is no parallel in all the
records of the world to the case of that prolific British mother
who has sent forth her innumerable children over all the earth, to
be the founders of half a dozen empires. She, with her progeny,
may almost claim to constitute a kind of universal church in
politics. But, among these children, there is one whose place in
the world's eye and in history is superlative : it is the American
Republic. She is the eldest born. She has, taking the capacity
of her land into view as well as its mere measurement, a natural
base for the greatest continuous empire ever established by man.
And it may be well here to mention, what has not always been
sufficiently observed, that the distinction between continuous em-
pire, and empire severed and dispersed over sea, is vital. The
development which the republic has effected has been unex-

KIN BEYOND SEA. 181

ampled in its rapidity and force. While other countries have
doubled, or at most trebled, their population, she has risen, dur-
ing one single century of freedom, in round numbers, from two
millions to forty-five. As to riches, it is reasonable to establish,
from the decennial stages of the progress thus far achieved, a
series for the future ; and, reckoning upon this basis, I suppose
that the very next census, in the year 1880, will exhibit her to
the world as certainly the wealthiest of all the nations. The
huge figure of £1,000,000,000, which may be taken roundly
as the annual income of the United Kingdom, has been reached
at a surprising rate; a rate which may perhaps be best ex-
pressed by saying that, if we had started forty or fifty years
ago from zero, at the rate of our recent annual increment, we
should now have reached our present position. But while we
have been advancing with this portentous rapidity, America is
passing us by in a canter. Yet even now the work of searching
the soil and the bowels of the territory, and opening out her
enterprise throughout its vast expanse, is in its infancy. The
England and the America of the present are probably the two
strongest nations of the world. But there can hardly be a doubt,
as between the America and the England of the future, that the
daughter, at some no very distant time, will, whether fairer or
less fair, be unquestionably yet stronger than the mother.

" O matre forti filia fortior." *

But all this pompous detail of material triumphs, whether for
the one or for the other, is worse than idle, unless the men of the
two countries shall remain, or shall become, greater than the
mere things that they produce, and shall know how to regard
those things simply as tools and materials for the attainments of
the highest purposes of their being. Ascending, then, from the
ground-floor of material industry toward the regions in which
these purposes are to be wrought out, it is for each nation to con-
sider how far its institutions have reached a state in which they
can contribute their maximum to the store of human happiness
and excellence. And for the political student all over the world
it will be beyond anything curious as well as useful to examine
with what diversities, as well as what resemblances, of apparatus

* Altered from Hor., Od. I., 16.

182 TEE NORTE AMERICAN REVIEW.

the two greater branches of a race born to command have been
minded, or induced, or constrained, to work out, in their sea-
severed seats, their political destinies according to their respec-
tive laws.

No higher ambition can find vent in a paper such as this than
to suggest the position and claims of the subject, and slightly to
indicate a few outlines, or at least fragments, of' the working ma-
terial.

In many and the most fundamental respects the two still
carry in undiminished, perhaps in increasing, clearness the notes
of resemblance that beseem a parent and a child.

Both wish for self-government ; and, however grave the draw-
backs under which in one or both it exists, the two have, among
the great nations of the world, made the most effectual advances
toward the true aim of rational politics.

They are similarly associated in their fixed idea that the
force in which all government takes effect is to be constantly
backed, and, as it were, illuminated, by thought in speech and
writing. The ruler of St. Paul's time "bare the sword" (Eom.
xiii. 4). Bare it, as the apostle says, with a mission to do right ;
but he says nothing of any duty, or any custom, to show by rea-
son that he was doing right. Our two governments, whatsoever
they do, have to give reasons for it ; not reasons which will con-
vince the unreasonable, but reasons which on the whole will con-
vince the average mind, and carry it unitedly forward in a course
of action, often though not always wise, and bearing within itself
provisions, where it is unwise, for the correction of its own un-
wisdom before it grow to an intolerable rankness. They are gov-
ernments, not of force only, but of persuasion.

Many more are the concords, and not less vital than these, of
the two nations as expressed in their institutions. They alike
prefer the practical to the abstract. They tolerate opinion, with
only a reserve on behalf of decency ; and they desire to confine
coercion to the province of action, and to leave thought, as such,
entirely free. They set a high value on liberty for its own sake.
They desire to give full scope to the principles of self-reliance in
the people, and they deem self-help to be immeasurably superior
to help in any other form — to be the only help, in short, which
ought not to be continually, or periodically, put upon its trial, and

KIN BEYOND SEA. 183

required to make good its title. They mistrust and mislike the
centralization of power ; and they cherish municipal, local, even
parochial liberties, as nursery-grounds, not only for the produc-
tion here and there of able men, but for the general training of
public virtue and independent spirit. They regard publicity as
the vital air of politics ; through which alone, in its freest circu-
lation, opinions can be thrown into common stock for the good of
all, and the balance of relative rights and claims can be habitually
and peaceably adjusted. It would be difficult, in the case of any
other pair of nations, to present an assemblage of traits at once so
common and so distinctive as has been given in this probably im-
perfect enumeration.

There were, however, the strongest reasons why America could
not grow into a reflection or repetition of England. Passing from
a narrow island to a continent almost without bounds, the colonists
at once and vitally altered their conditions of thought, as well as
of existence, in relation to the most important and most operative
of all social facts, the possession of the soil. In England, ine-
quality lies imbedded in the very base of the social structure ; in
America, it is a late, incidental, unrecognized product, not of tra-
dition, but of industry and wealth, as they advance with various
and, of necessity, unequal steps. Heredity, seated as an idea in
the heart's core of Englishmen, and sustaining far more than it is
sustained by those of our institutions which express it, was as truly
absent from the intellectual and moral store with which the col-
onists traversed the Atlantic as if it had been some forgotten
article in the bills of lading that made up their cargoes. Equality
combined with liberty, and renewable at each descent from one
generation to another, like a lease with stipulated breaks, was the
groundwork of their social creed. In vain was it sought, by ar-
rangements such as those concocted with the name of Baltimore
or of Penn, to qualify the action of those overpowering forces
which so determined the case. Slavery itself, strange as it now
must seem, failed to impair the theory, however it may have im-
ported into the practice a hideous solecism. No hardier repub-
licanism was generated in New England than in the slave States
of the South, which produced so many of the great statesmen of
America.

It may be said that the North, and not the South, had the

184 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

larger number of colonists, and was the centre of those command-
ing moral influences which gave to the country as a whole its
political and moral atmosphere. The type and form of manhood
for America was supplied neither by the Eecusant in Maryland,
nor by the Cavalier in Virginia, but by the Puritan of New Eng-
land ; and it would have been a form and type widely different,
could the colonization have taken place a couple of centuries,
or a single century, sooner. Neither the Tudor nor even the
Plantagenet period could have supplied its special form. The
Reformation was a cardinal factor in its production ; and this in
more ways than one.

Before that great epoch, the political forces of the country
were represented on the whole by the monarch on one side, and
the people on the other. In the people, setting aside the latent
vein of Lollardism, there was a general homogeneity with respect
to all that concerned the relation of governors and governed. In
the deposition of sovereigns, the resistance to abuses, the estab-
lishment of institutions for the defense of liberty, there were no
two parties to divide the land. But, with the Kef ormation, a new
dualism was sensibly developed among us. Not a dualism so vio-
lent as to break up the national unity, but yet one so marked and
substantial that thenceforward it was very difficult for any indi-
vidual or body of men to represent the entire English character,
and the old balance of its forces. The wrench which severed the
Church and people from the Roman obedience left for domestic
settlement thereafter a tremendous internal question, between the
historical and the new, which in its milder forms perplexes us to
this day. Except during the short reign of Edward VI., the civil
power, in various methods and degrees, took what may be termed
the traditionary side, and favored the development of the histori-
cal more than the individual aspect of the national religion. These
elements confronted one another during the reigns of the earlier
Stuarts, not only with obstinacy but with fierceness. There had
grown up with the Tudors, from a variety of causes, a great
exaggeration of the idea of royal power ; and this arrived, under
James I. and Charles I., at a rank maturity. Not less but even
more masculine and determined was the converse development.
Mr. Hallam saw, and has said, that at the outbreak of the Great
Rebellion the old British Constitution was in danger, not from

KIN BEYOND SEA. 185

one party but from both. In that mixed fabric bad once been
harmonized the ideas both of religions duty and of allegiance
as related to it, which were now held in severance. The hardiest
and dominating portion of the American colonists represented
that severance in its extremest form, and had dropped out of the
order of the ideas, which they carried across the water, all those
elements of political Anglicism which give to aristocracy in this
country a position only second in strength to that of freedom.
State and Church alike had frowned upon them ; and their strong
reaction was a reaction of their entire nature, alike of the spiritual
and the secular man. All that was democratic in the policy of
England, and all that was Protestant in her religion, they carried
with them, in pronounced and exclusive forms, to a soil and a
scene singularly suited for their growth.

It is to the honor of the British monarchy that, upon the
whole, it frankly recognized the facts, and did not pedantically
endeavor to constrain by artificial and alien limitations the
growth of the infant states. It is a thing to be remembered that
the accusations of the colonies in 1776 were entirely leveled at
the reigning king, and that a true acquittal was thus given by
them to every preceding reign. Their infancy had been upon
the whole what their manhood was to be, self -governed and re-
publican. Their Revolution, as we call it, was like ours in the
main, a vindication of liberties inherited and possessed. It was a
conservative revolution ; and the happy result was that, notwith-
standing the sharpness of the collision with the mother-country
and with domestic loyalism, the thirteen colonies made provision
for their future in conformity, as to all that determined life and
manners, with the recollections of their past. The two constitu-
tions of the two countries express indeed rather the differences
than the resemblances of the nations. The one is a thing grown,
the other a thing made : the one a praxis, the other a poiesis :
the one the offspring of tendency and indeterminate time, the
other of choice and of an epoch. But, as the British Constitution
is the most subtile organism which has proceeded from the womb
and the long gestation of progressive history, so the American
Constitution is, so far as I can see, the most wonderful work ever
struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man. It
has had a century of trial, under the pressure of exigencies caused

186 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

by an expansion unexampled in point of rapidity and range ; and
its exemption from formal change, though not entire, has cer-
tainly proved the sagacity of the constructors, and the stubborn
strength of the fabric.

One whose life has been greatly absorbed in working, with
others, the institutions of his own country, has not had the op-
portunities necessary for the careful and searching scrutiny of
institutions elsewhere. I should feel, in looking at those of
America, like one who attempts to scan the stars with the naked
eye. My notices can only be few, faint, and superficial ; they are
but an introduction to what I have to say of my own country. A
few sentences will dispose of them.

America, whose attitude toward England has always been mas-
culine and real, has no longer to anticipate at our hands the friv-
olous and offensive criticisms which were once in vogue among
us. But neither nation prefers (and it would be an ill sign if
either did prefer) the institutions of the other ; and we certainly
do not contemplate the great Republic in the spirit of mere op-
timism. "We see that it has a marvelous and unexampled adap-
tation for its peculiar vocation ; that it must be judged, not in the
abstract, but under the fore-ordered laws of its existence ; that it
has purged away the blot with which we brought it into the
world ; that it bravely and vigorously grapples with the problem
of making a continent into a state ; and that it treasures with
fondness the traditions of British antiquity, which are in truth
unconditionally its own, as well, and as much, as they are ours.
The thing that perhaps chiefly puzzles the inhabitants of the old
country is, why the American people should permit their entire
existence to be continually disturbed by the business of the pres-
idential elections ; and, still more, why they should raise to its
maximum the intensity of this perturbation by providing, as we
are told, for what is termed a clean sweep of the entire civil ser-
vice, in all its ranks and departments, on each accession of a Chief
Magistrate. "We do not perceive why this arrangement is more
rational than would be a corresponding usage in this country on
each change of ministry. Our practice is as different as possible.
"We limit to a few scores of persons the removals and appoint-
ments on these occasions; although our ministries seem to us,
not unfrequently, to be more sharply severed from one another,

KIN BEYOND SEA. 187

in principle and tendency, than are the successive Presidents of
the great Union.

It would be out of place to discuss in this article occasional
phenomena of local corruption in the United States, by which the
nation at large can hardly be touched ; or the mysterious manipu-
lations of votes for the presidency, which are now understood to
be under examination ; or the very curious influences which are
shaping the politics of the negroes and of the South. These last
are corollaries to the great slave-question ; and it seems very pos-
sible that after a few years we may see most of the laborers, both
in the Southern States and in England, actively addicted to the
political support of that section of their countrymen who to the
last had resisted their emancipation.

But if there be those in this country who think that American
democracy means public levity and intemperance, or a lack of
skill and sagacity in politics, or the absence of self-command and
self-denial, let them bear in mind a few of the most salient and
recent facts of history, which may profitably be recommended to
their reflections. We emancipated a million of negroes by peace-
ful legislation ; America liberated four or five millions by a
bloody civil war ; yet the industry and exports of the Southern
States are maintained, while those of our negro colonies have
dwindled ; the South enjoys all its franchises, but we have, proh
pudor ! found no better method of providing for peace and order
in Jamaica, the chief of our islands, than by the hard and vulgar,
even where needful, expedient of abolishing entirely its repre-
sentative institutions.

The civil war compelled the States, both North and South, to
train and embody a million and a half of men, and to present to
view the greatest, instead of the smallest, armed forces in the
world. Here there was supposed to arise a double danger. First,
that, on a sudden cessation of the war, military life and habits
could not be shaken off, and, having become rudely and widely
predominant, would bias the country toward an aggressive policy,
or, still worse, would find vent in predatory or revolutionary op-
erations. Secondly, that a military caste would grow up, with its
habits of exclusiveness and command, and would influence the
tone of politics in a direction adverse to republican freedom. But
both apprehensions proved to be wholly imaginary. The innu-

188 THE NORTE AMERICAN REVIEW.

merable soldiery was at once dissolved. Cincinnatus, no longer
a unique example, became the commonplace of every day, the
type and mould of a nation. The whole enormous mass quietly
resumed the habits of social life. The generals of yesterday were
the editors, the secretaries, and the solicitors, of to-day. The just
jealousy of the state gave life to the now-forgotten maxim of
Judge Blackstone, who denounced as perilous the erection of a
separate profession of arms in a free country. The standing army,
expanded by the heat of civil contest to gigantic dimensions, set-
tled down again into the framework of a miniature with the re-
turning temperature of civil life, and became a power wellnigh
invisible, from its minuteness, amid the powers which sway the
movements of a society exceeding forty millions.

More remarkable still was the financial sequel to the great con-
flict. The internal taxation for Federal purposes, which before
its commencement had been unknown, was raised, in obedience to
an exigency of life and death, so as to exceed every present and
every past example. It pursued and worried all the transactions
of life. The interest of the American debt grew to be the high-
est in the world, and the capital touched £560,000,000. Here
was provided for the faith and patience of the people a touchstone
of extreme severity. In England, at the close of the great French
war, the propertied classes, who were supreme in Parliament, at
once rebelled against the Tory Government, and refused to pro-
long the income-tax even for a single year. We talked big, both
then and now, about the payment of our national debt; but
sixty-three years have now elapsed, all of them except two called
years of peace, and we have reduced the huge total by about one-
ninth ; that is to say, by little over £100,000,000, or scarcely more
than £1,500,000 a year. This is the conduct of a state elabo-
rately digested into orders and degrees, famed for wisdom and
forethought, and consolidated by a long experience. But Amer-
ica continued long to bear, on her unaccustomed and still smarting
shoulders, the burden of the war taxation. In twelve years she
has reduced her debt by £158,000,000, or at the rate of £13,000,000
for every year. In each twelve months she has done what we did
in eight years ; her self-command, self-denial, and wise fore-
thought for the future have been, to say the least, eightfold ours.
These are facts which redound greatly to her honor ; and the his-

KIN BEYOND SEA. 189

torian will record with surprise that an enfranchised nation toler-
ated burdens which in this country a selected class, possessed of
the representation, did not dare to face, and that the most unmit-
igated democracy known to the annals of the world resolutely re-
duced at its own cost prospective liabilities of the state, which
the aristocratic, and plutocratic, and monarchical Government of
the United Kingdom has been contented ignobly to hand over to
posterity. And such facts should be told out. It is our fashion
so to tell them, against as well as for ourselves ; and the record
of them may some day be among the means of stirring us up to
a policy more worthy of the name and fame of England.

It is true, indeed, that we lie under some heavy and, I fear,
increasing disadvantages, which amount almost to disabilities.
Not, however, any disadvantage respecting power, as power is
commonly understood. But, while America has a nearly homo-
geneous country, and an admirable division of political labor
between the States individually and the Federal Government, we
are, in public affairs, an overcharged and overweighted people.
We have undertaken the cares of empire upon a scale, and with
a diversity, unexampled in history ; and, as it has not yet pleased
Providence to endow us with brain-force and animal strength in
an equally abnormal proportion, the consequence is that we per-
form the work of government, as to many among its more impor-
tant departments, in a very superficial and slovenly manner. The
affairs of the three associated kingdoms, with their great diver-
sities of law, interest, and circumstance, make the government
of them, even if they stood alone, a business more voluminous,
so to speak, than that of any other 33,000,000 civilized men. To
lighten the cares of the central Legislature by judicious devolu-
tion, it is probable that much might be done ; but nothing is
done, or even attempted to be done. The greater colonies have
happily attained to a virtual self-government ; yet the aggregate
mass of business connected with our colonial possessions contin-
ues to be very large. The Indian Empire is of itself a charge so
vast, and demanding so much thought and care, that, if it were
the sole transmarine appendage to the crown, it would amply tax
the best ordinary stock of human energies. Notoriously, it ob-
tains from the Parliament only a small fraction of the attention
it deserves. Questions affecting individuals, again, or small

190 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

interests, or classes, excite here a greater interest, and occupy a
larger share of time, than perhaps in any other community. In
no country, I may add, are the interests of persons or classes so
favored when they compete with those of the public; and in
none are they more exacting, or more wakeful to turn this advan-
tage to the best account. With the vast extension of our enter-
prise and our trade comes a breadth of liability not less large, to
consider everything that is critical in the affairs of foreign states ;
and the real responsibilities, thus existing for us, are unnaturally
inflated by fast-growing tendencies toward exaggeration of our
concern in these matters, and even toward setting up fictitious
interests in cases where none can discern them except ourselves,
and such Continental friends as practise upon our credulity and
our fears for purposes of their own. Last of all, it is not to be
denied that in what I have now been saying I do not represent
the public sentiment. The nation is not at all conscious of being
overdone. The people see that their House of Commons is the
hardest working legislative assembly in the world; and, this
being so, they assume it is all right. Nothing pays better, in
point of popularity, than those gratuitous additions to obligations
already beyond human strength, which look like accessions or
assertion of power ; such as the annexation of new territory, or
the silly transaction known as the purchase of shares in the Suez
Canal.

All my life long I have seen this excess of work as compared
with the power to do it ; but the evil has increased with the sur-
feit of wealth, and there is no sign that the increase is near its
end. The people of this country are a very strong people ; but
there is no strength that can permanently endure, without pro-
voking inconvenient consequences, this kind of political debauch.
It may be hoped, but it cannot be predicted, that the mischief
will be encountered and subdued at the point where it will have
become sensibly troublesome, but will not have grown to be irre-
mediable.

The main and central point of interest, however, in the insti-
tutions of a country is the manner in which it draws together
and compounds the public forces in the balanced action of the
state. It seems plain that the formal arrangements for this pur-
pose in America are very different from ours. It may even be a

Km BEYOND SEA. 191

question whether they are not, in certain respects, less popular ;
whether our institutions do not give more rapid effect than those
of the Union, to any formed opinion, and resolved intention, of
the nation.

In the formation of the Federal Government we seem to per-
ceive three stages of distinct advancement : 1. The formation of
the Confederation, under the pressure of the "War of Indepen-
dence. 2. The Constitution, which placed the Federal Govern-
ment in defined and direct relation with the people inhabiting
the several States. 3. The struggle with the South, which for
the first time, and definitely, decided that to the Union, through
its Federal organization, and not to the State governments, were
reserved all the questions not decided and disposed of by the ex-
press provisions of the Constitution itself. The great arcanum
imperii, which with us belongs to the three branches of the Legis-
lature, and which is expressed by the current phrase, " omnipo-
tence of Parliament," thus became the acknowledged property
of the three branches of the Federal Legislature ; and the old
and respectable doctrine of State independence is now no more
than an archaeological relic, a piece of historical antiquarianism.
Yet the actual attributions of the State authorities cover by far
the largest part of the province of government ; and, by this
division of labor and authority, the problem of fixing for the
nation a political centre of gravity is divested of a large part of
its difficulty and danger, in some proportion to the limitations of
the working precinct. Within that precinct the initiation, as
well as the final sanction in the great business of finance, is made
over to the popular branch of the Legislature, and a most inter-
esting question arises upon the comparative merits of this arrange-
ment, and of our own method, which theoretically throws upon
the crown the responsibility of initiating public charge, and un-
der which, until a recent period, our practice was in actual, and
even close, correspondence with this theory. We next come to
a difference still more marked. The Federal Executive is born
anew of the nation at the end of each four years, and dies at the
end. But, during the course of those years, it is independent, in
the person both of the President and of his ministers, alike of
the people, of their representatives, and of that remarkable body,
the most remarkable of all the inventions of modern politics, the

192 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

Senate of the United States. In this important matter, whatever
be the relative excellences and defects of the British and Amer-
ican systems, it is most certain that nothing would induce the
people of this country, or even the Tory portion of them, to ex-
change our own for theirs.

It may, indeed, not be obvious to the foreign eye what is the
exact difference of the two. Both the representative Chambers
hold the power of the purse. But in America its conditions are
such that it does not operate in any way on behalf of the Chamber
or of the nation, as against the Executive. In England, on the
contrary, its efficiency has been such that it has worked out for
itself channels of effective operation, such as to dispense with its
direct use, and avoid the inconveniences which might be attendant
upon that use. A vote of the House of Commons, declaring a
withdrawal of its confidence, has always sufficed for the purpose
of displacing a ministry ; nay, persistent obstruction of its meas-
ures, and even lighter causes, have conveyed the hint, which has
been obediently taken. But the people, how is it with them ?
Do not they in England part with their power, and make it over
to the House of Commons, as completely as the American people
part with it to the President ? They give it over for four years ;
we for a period which on the average is somewhat more : they,
to resume it at a fixed time ; we, on an unfixed contingency, and
at a time which will finally be determined, not according to the
popular will, but according to the views which a ministry may
entertain of its duty or convenience.

All this is true ; but it is not the whole truth. In the United
Kingdom, the people as such cannot commonly act upon the min-
istry as such. But mediately, though not immediately, they gain
the end : for they can work upon that which works upon the
ministry, namely, on the House of Commons. Firstly, they have
not renounced, like the American people, the exercise of their
power for a given time ; and they are at all times free by speech,
petition, public meeting, to endeavor to get it back in full by
bringing about a dissolution. Secondly, in a Parliament with
nearly 660 members, vacancies occur with tolerable frequency ;
and, as they are commonly filled up forthwith, they continually
modify the color of the Parliament, conformably, not to the past,
but to the present feeling of the nation ; or, at least, of the con-

KIN BEYOND SEA. 193

stituency, which for practical purposes is different indeed, yet not
very different. But, besides exercising a limited positive influ-
ence on the present, they supply a much less limited indication of
the future. Of the members who at a given time sit in the
House of Commons, the vast majority, probably more than nine-
tenths, have the desire to sit there again, after a dissolution
which may come at any moment. They therefore study political
weather- wisdom, and in varying degrees adapt themselves to the
indications of the sky. It will now be readily perceived how the
popular sentiment in England, so far as it is awake, is not meanly
provided with the ways of making itself respected, whether for
the purpose of displacing and replacing a ministry, or of con-
straining it (as sometimes happens) to alter or reverse its policy,
sufficiently, at least, to conjure down the gathering and muttering
storm.

It is true, indeed, that every nation is of necessity, to a great
extent, in the condition of the sluggard with regard to public
policy ; hard to rouse, harder to keep aroused, sure after a little
while to sink back into his slumber. They have a vast but an
encumbered power; and, in their struggles with overweening
authority, or with property, the excess of force, which they un-
doubtedly possess, is more than counterbalanced by the constant
wakefulness of the adversary, by his knowledge of their weak-
ness, and by his command of opportunity. But this is a fault
lying rather in the conditions of human life, than in political
institutions. Theretis no known mode of making attention and
inattention equal in their results. It is enough to say that in
England, when the nation can attend, it can prevail. So we may
say, then, that in the American Union the Federal Executive is
independent for each four years both of the Congress and of the
people. But the British ministry is largely dependent on the
people whenever the people firmly will it ; and is always depend-
ent on the House of Commons, except when it can safely and
effectually appeal to the people.

So far, so good. But if we wish really to understand the
manner in which the queen's Government over the British Em-
pire is carried on, we must now prepare to examine into sharper
contrasts than any which our path has yet brought into view.
The power of the American Executive resides in the person of

194 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

the actual President, and passes from him to his successor. His
ministers, grouped around him, are the servants, not only of his
office, but of his mind. The intelligence which carries on the
Government has its main seat in him. The responsibility of
failures is understood to fall on him ; and it is round his head
that success sheds its halo. The American Government is de-
scribed truly as a government composed of three members, of
three powers distinct from one another. The English Govern-
ment is likewise 60 described, not truly, but conventionally. For
in the English Government there has gradually formed itself a
fourth power, entering into and sharing the vitality of each of
the other three, and charged with the business of holding them in
harmony as they march.

This fourth power is the ministry, or more properly the
cabinet. For the rest of the ministry is subordinate and ancil-
lary; and, though it largely shares in many departments the
labors of the cabinet, yet it has only a secondary and derivative
share in the higher responsibilities. No account of the present
British Constitution is worth having, which does not take this
fourth power largely and carefully into view. And yet it is not
a distinct power, made up of elements unknown to the other
three ; any more than a sphere contains elements other than those
referable to the three coordinates which determine the position
of every point in space. The fourth power is parasitical to the
three others ; and lives upon their life, without any separate
existence. One portion of it forms a part, which may be termed
an integral part, of the House of Lords, another of the House of
Commons ; and the two conjointly, nestling within the precinct
of royalty, form the inner council of the crown, assuming the
whole of its responsibilities, and in consequence wielding, as a
rule, its powers. The cabinet is the threefold hinge that con-
nects together for action the British Constitution of king or
queen, Lords, and Commons. Upon it is concentrated the whole
strain of the Government, and it constitutes from day to day the
true centre of gravity for the working system of the state, al-
though the ultimate superiority of force resides in the represent-
ative Chamber.

There is no statute or legal usage of this country which re-
quires that the ministers of the crown should hold seats in the

KIN BEYOND SEA. 195

one or the other House of Parliament. It is, perhaps, upon this
account that, while most of my countrymen would, as I suppose,
declare it to be a becoming and convenient custom, yet compara-
tively few are aware how near the seat of life the observance
lies, how closely it is connected with the equipoise and unity of
the social forces. It is rarely departed from, even in an indi-
vidual case ; never, as far as my knowledge goes, on a wider scale.
Prom accidental circumstances it happened that I was a Secretary
of State between December, 1845, and July, 1846, without a seat
in the House of Commons. This (which did not pass wholly
without challenge) is, I believe, by much the most notable in-
stance for the last fifty years ; and it is only within the last fifty
years that our constitutional system has completely settled down.
Before the reform of Parliament it was always easy to find a place
for a minister excluded from his seat ; as Sir Robert Peel, for
example, ejected from Oxford University, at once found refuge
and repose in Tamworth. I desire to fix attention on the identi-
fication, in this country, of the minister and the member of a
House of Parliament. It is, as to the House of Commons espe-
cially, an inseparable and vital part of our system. The associa-
tion of the ministers with the Parliament, and through the
House of Commons with the people, is the counterpart to their
association as ministers with the crown and the prerogative. The
decisions that they take are taken under the competing pressure
of a bias this way and a bias that way, and strictly represent what
is termed in mechanics the composition of forces. Upon them,
thus placed, it devolves to provide that the Houses of Parliament
shall loyally counsel and serve the crown, and that the crown
shall act strictly in accordance with its obligations to the nation.
I will not presume to say whether the adoption of the rule in
America would or would not lay the foundation of a great change
in the Federal Constitution ; but I am quite sure that the abroga-
tion of it in England would either alter the form of government,
or bring about a crisis. That it conduces to the personal comfort
of ministers I will not undertake to say. The various currents
of political and social influences meet edgewise in their persons,
much like the conflicting tides in St. George's Channel or the
Straits of Dover; for while they are the ultimate regulators
of the relations between the crown on the one side, and the
vol. cxxvn. — no. 264. 14

196 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

people through the Houses of Parliament on the other, they
have no authority vested in them to coerce or censure either way.
Their attitude toward the Houses must always be that of defer-
ence, their language that of respect, if not submission. Still
more must their attitude and language toward the sovereign be
the same in principle, and yet more marked in form, and this,
though upon them lies the ultimate responsibility of deciding
what shall be done in the crown's name in every branch of ad-
ministration, and every department of policy, coupled only with
the alternative of ceasing to be ministers, if what they may ad-
visedly deem the requisite power of action be denied them.

In the ordinary administration of the government the sov-
ereign personally is, so to speak, behind the scenes ; performing,
indeed, many personal acts by the sign-manual, or otherwise ; but^
in each and all of them, covered by the counter-signature or advice
of ministers who stand between the august personage and the peo-
ple. There is, accordingly, no more power, under the form of our
Constitution, to assail the monarch in his personal capacity, or to
assail through him the line of succession to the crown, than there
is at chess to put the king in check. In truth, a good deal,
though by no means the whole, of the philosophy of the British
Constitution is represented in this central point of the wonderful
game, against which the only reproach — the reproach of Lord
Bacon — is that it is hardly a relaxation, but rather a serious tax
upon the brain.

The sovereign in England is the symbol of the nation's unity,
and the apex of the social structure ; the maker (with advice) of
the laws ; the supreme governor of the Church ; the fountain of
justice ; the sole source of honor ; the person to whom all mili-
tary, all naval, all civil service is rendered. The sovereign owns
very large properties; receives and holds, in law, the entire
revenue of the state ; appoints and dismisses ministers ; makes
treaties ; pardons crime, or abates its punishment ; wages war, or
concludes peace; summons and dissolves the Parliament; exer-
cises these vast powers for the most part without any specified
restraint of law; and yet enjoys, in regard to these and every
other function, an absolute immunity from consequences. There
is no provision in the law of the United Empire, or in the ma-
chinery of the Constitution, for calling the sovereign to account ;

KIN BEYOND SEA. 197

and only in one solitary and improbable but perfectly denned
case — that of bis submitting to the jurisdiction of the pope — is
he deprived by statute of the throne. Setting aside that peculiar
exception, the offspring of a necessity still freshly felt when it
was made, the Constitution might seem to be founded on the be-
lief of a real infallibility in its head. Less, at any rate, cannot be
said than this. Regal right has, since the Revolution of 1688,
been expressly founded upon contract; and the breach of that
contract destroys the title to the allegiance of the subject. But
no provision, other than the general rule of hereditary succession,
is made to meet either this case or any other form of political
miscarriage or misdeed. It seems as though the genius of the
nation would not stain its lips by so much as the mere utterance
of such a word ; nor can we put this state of facts into language
more justly than by saying that the Constitution would regard the
default of the monarch with his heirs as the chaos of the state,
and would simply trust to the inherent energies of the several
orders of society for its legal reconstruction.

The original authorship of the representative system is com-
monly accorded to the English race. More clear and indisputable
is its title to the great political discovery of constitutional king-
ship. And a very great discovery it is. Whether it is destined,
in any future day, to minister in its integrity to the needs of the
New "World, it may be hard to say. In that important branch of its
utility which is negative, it completely serves the purposes of the
many strong and rising colonies of Great Britain, and saves them
all the perplexities and perils attendant upon successions to the
headship of the Executive. It presents to them, as it does to us,
the symbol of unity, and the object of all our political veneration,
which we love to find rather in a person than in an abstract entity,
like the state. But the Old World, at any rate, still is, and may
long continue, to constitute the living centre of civilization, and
to hold the primacy of the race ; and of this great society the
several members approximate, in a rapidly-extending series, to the
practice and idea of constitutional kingship. The great states of
Christendom, with only two exceptions, have, with more or less
distinctness adopted it. Many of them, both great and small,
have thoroughly assimilated it to their system. The autocracy of
Russia, and the Republic of France, each of them congenial to

198 THE FORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

the present wants of the respective countries, may yet, hereafter,
gravitate toward the principle which elsewhere has developed so
great an attractive power. Should the current that has prevailed
through the last half -century maintain its direction and its
strength, another fifty years may see all Europe adhering to the
theory and practice of this beneficent institution, and peaceably
sailing in the wake of England.

JSTo doubt, if tried by an ideal standard, it is open to criticism.
Aristotle and Plato, nay, Bacon, and perhaps Leibnitz, would
have scouted it as a scientific abortion. Some men would draw
disparaging comparisons between the mediasval and the modern
king\ In the person of the first was normally embodied the
force paramount over all others in the country, and on him was
laid a weight of responsibility and toil so tremendous that his
function seems always to border upon the superhuman ; that his
life commonly wore out before the natural term ; and that an in-
describable majesty, dignity, and interest, surround him in his mis-
fortunes, nay, almost in his degradation ; as, for instance, amid

" The shrieks of death, through Berkeley's roof that ring —
Shrieks of an agonizing king." *

For this concentration of power, toil, and liability, milder
realities have now been substituted; and ministerial responsibility
comes between the monarch and every public trial of necessity,
like armor between the flesh and the spear that would seek to
pierce it ; only this is an armor at once living and impregnable.
It may be said by an adverse critic that the constitutional mon-
arch is only a depositary of power, as an armory is a depository of
arms ; but that those who wield the arms, and those alone, con-
stitute the true governing authority. And no doubt this is so far
true, that the scheme aims at associating in the work of govern-
ment with the head of the state the persons best adapted to meet
the wants and wishes of the people, under the condition that the
several aspects of supreme power shall be severally allotted;
dignity and visible authority shall lie wholly with the wearer of
the crown, but labor mainly, and responsibility wholly, with its
servants. Hence, without doubt, it follows that, should differ-

* Gray's "Bard."

KIN BEYOND SEA. 199

ences arise, it is the will of those, in whose minds the work of
government is elaborated, that in the last resort must prevail.
This capital and vital consequence flows out of the principle that
the political action of the monarch shall everywhere be mediate,
and conditional upon the concurrence of confidential advisers. It
is impossible to reconcile any, even the smallest, abatement of
this doctrine with the perfect, absolute immunity of the sover-
eign from consequences. There can be in England no disloyalty
more gross, as to its effects, than the superstition which affects to
assign to the sovereign a separate, and, so far as separate, tran-
scendental, sphere of political action. Anonymous servility has,
indeed, in these last days, hinted such a doctrine ; * but it is no
more practicable to make it thrive in England than to rear the
jungles of Bengal on Salisbury Plain.

There is, indeed, one great and critical act, the responsibility
for which falls momentarily or provisionally on the sovereign : it
is the dismissal of an existing ministry, and the appointment of a
new one. This act is usually performed with the aid drawn from
authentic manifestations of public opinion, mostly such as are ob-
tained through the votes or conduct of the House of Commons.
Since the reign of George III. there has been but one change of
ministry in which the monarch acted without the support of these
indications. It was when "William TV., in 1834, dismissed the gov-
ernment of Lord Melbourne, which was known to be supported,
though after a lukewarm fashion, by a large majority of the exist-
ing House of Commons. But the royal responsibility was, accord-
ing to the doctrine of our Constitution, completely taken over, ex
post facto, by Sir Robert Peel, as the person who consented, on the
call of the king, to take Lord Melbourne's office. Thus, though
the act was rash, and hard to justify, the doctrine of personal im-
munity was in no way endangered. And here we may notice that
in theory an absolute personal immunity implies a correlative lim-
itation of power, greater than is always found in practice. It can
hardly be said that the king's initiative left to Sir Robert Peel a
freedom perfectly unimpaired. And most certainly it was a very
real exercise of personal power. The power did not suffice for its
end, which was to overset the Liberal predominance ; but it very

* Quarterly Review, April, 1878, Article I.

200 THE NORTE AMERICAN REVIEW.

nearly sufficed. Unconditionally entitled to dismiss the ministers,
the sovereign can, of course, choose his own opportunity. He
may defy the Parliament, if he can count upon the people.
"William IV., in the year 1834, had neither Parliament nor people
with him. His act was within the limits of the Constitution, for
it was covered by the responsibility of the acceding ministry.
But it reduced the Liberal majority from a number certainly be-
yond three hundred to about thirty; and it constituted an ex-
ceptional but very real and large action on the politics of the
country, by the direct will of the king. I speak of the immediate
effects. Its eventual result may have been different ; for it con-
verted a large, disjointed mass into a smaller but organized and
sufficient force, which held the fortress of power for the six years
1835-41. If the royal intervention anticipated and averted decay
from natural causes, then, with all its immediate success, it de-
feated its own real aim.

But this power of dismissing a ministry at will, large as it
may be under given circumstances, is neither the safest nor the
only power which, in the ordinary course of things, falls consti-
tutionally to the personal share of the wearer of the crown. He
is entitled, on all subjects coming before the ministry, to knowl-
edge and opportunities of discussion, unlimited save by the iron
necessities of business. Though decisions must ultimately con-
form to the sense of those who are to be responsible for them,
yet their business is to inform and persuade the sovereign, not to
overrule him. "Were it possible for him, within the limits of
human time and strength, to enter actively into all public trans-
actions, he would be fully entitled to do so. "What is actually
submitted is supposed to be the most fruitful and important
part, the cream of affairs. In the discussion of them the monarch
has more than one advantage over his advisers. He is permanent,
they are fugitive ; he speaks from the vantage-ground of a station
unapproachably higher ; he takes a calm and leisurely survey, while
they are worried with the preparatory stages, and their force is
often impaired by the pressure of countless detail. He may be,
therefore, a weighty factor in all deliberations of state. Every
discovery of a blot, that the studies of the sovereign in the do-
main of business enable him to make, strengthens his hands and
enhances his authority. It is plain, then, that there is abundant

KIN BEYOND SEA. 201

scope for mental activity to be at work under the gorgeous robes
of royalty.

This power takes spontaneously the form of influence, and
the amount of it depends on a variety of circumstances — on
talent, experience, tact, weight of character, steady, untiring in-
dustry, and habitual presence at the seat of government. In
proportion as any of these might fail, the real and legitimate
influence of the monarch over the course of affairs would di-
minish ; in proportion as they attain to fuller action, it would
increase. It is a moral, not a coercive influence. It operates
through the will and reason of the ministry, not over or against
them. It would be an evil and a perilous day for the monarchy
were any prospective possessor of the crown to assume or claim
for himself final, or preponderating, or even independent power,
in any one department of the state. The ideas and practice of
the time of George III., whose will in certain matters limited the
action of the ministers, cannot be revived, otherwise than by
what would be, on their part, nothing less than a base compliance,
a shameful subserviency, dangerous to the public weal, and, in
the highest degree, disloyal to the dynasty. Because, in every
free state, for every public act, some one must be responsible ;
and the question is, " Who shall it be ? " The British Constitution
answers, " The minister, and the minister exclusively." That he
may be responsible, all action must be fully shared by him. Sole
action, for the sovereign, would mean undefended, unprotected
action ; the armor of irresponsibility would not cover the whole
body against sword or spear ; a head would project beyond the
awning, and would invite a sunstroke.

The reader, then, will clearly see that there is no distinction
more vital to the practice of the British Constitution, or to a right
judgment upon it, than the distinction between the sovereign and
the crown. The crown has large prerogatives, endless functions
essential to the daily action, and even the life, of the state. To
place them in the hands of persons who should be mere tools of
a royal will, would expose those powers to constant unsupported
collision with the living forces of the nation, and to a certain and
irremediable crash. They are, therefore, intrusted to men who
must be prepared to answer for the use they make of them. This
ring of responsible ministerial agency forms a fence around the

202 THE NORTE AMERICAN REVIEW.

person of the sovereign, which has thus far proved impregnable
to all assaults. The august personage who from time to time
may rest within it, and who may possess the art of turning to the
best account the countless resources of the position, is no dumb
and senseless idol ; but, together with real and very large means
of influence upon policy, enjoys the undivided reverence which a
great people feels for its head ; and is likewise the first and by far
the weightiest among the forces which greatly mould, by example
and legitimate authority, the manners, nay, the morals, of a power-
ful aristocracy and a wealthy and highly-trained society. The
social influence of a sovereign, even if it stood alone, would be
an enormous attribute. The English people are not believers in
equality ; they do not, with the famous Declaration of July i,
1776, think it to be a self-evident truth that all men are born
equal. They hold rather the reverse of that proposition. At
any rate, in practice they are what I may call determined in-
equalitarians ; nay, in some cases, even without knowing it.
Their natural tendency, from the very base of British society,
and through all its strongly-built gradations, is to look upward ;
they are not apt to " untune degree." The sovereign is the high-
est height of the system ; is, in that system, like Jupiter among
the Roman gods, first without a second :

"Nee vigit quicquam simile ant secundum." *

Not, like Mont Blanc, with rivals in his neighborhood, but like
Ararat or Etna, towering alone and unapproachable. The step
downward from the king to the second person in the realm is
not like that from the second to the third : it is more even than
a stride, for it traverses a gulf. It is the wisdom of the British
Constitution to lodge the personality of its chief so high that
none shall under any circumstances be tempted to vie, or to dream
of vying, with it. The office, however, is not confused, though
it is associated, with the person ; and the elevation of official dig-
nity in the monarch of these realms has now for a testing period
worked well in conjunction with the limitation of merely per-
sonal power.

In the face of the country the sovereign and the ministers are
an absolute unity. The one may concede to the other ; but the

« Hor., Od. I., xii., 18.

KIN BEYOND SEA. 203

limit of concessions by the sovereign is at the point where he
becomes willing to try the experiment of changing his govern-
ment ; and the limit of concession by the ministers is at the point
where they become unwilling to bear what in all circumstances
they must bear while they remain ministers, the undivided re-
sponsibility of all that is done in the crown's name. But it is
not with the sovereign only that the ministry must be welded
into identity. It has a relation to sustain to the House of Lords,
which need not, however, be one of entire unity, for the House
of Lords, though a great power in the state, and able to cause
great embarrassment to an administration, is not able by a vote to
doom it to capital punishment. Only for fifteen years, out of
the last fifty, has the ministry of the day possessed the confidence
of the House of Lords. On the confidence of the House of
Commons it is immediately and vitally dependent. This con-
fidence it must always possess, either absolutely from identity
of political color, or relatively and conditionally. This last case
arises when an accidental dislocation of the majority in the Cham-
ber has put the machine for the moment out of gear, and the
unsafe experiment of a sort of provisional government is tried ;
much as the Roman Conclave has sometimes been satisfied with
a provisional pope, deemed likely to live for the time necessary
to reunite the fractions of the prevailing party.

I have said that the cabinet is essentially the regulator of the
relations between king, Lords, and Commons, exercising func-
tionally the powers of the first, and incorporated, in the persons
of its members, with the second and the third. It is, therefore,
itself a great power. But let no one suppose it is the greatest.
In a balance nicely poised a small weight may turn the scale, and
the helm that directs the ship is not stronger than the ship. It is
a cardinal axiom of the modern British Constitution that the
House of Commons is the greatest of the powers of the state.
It might, by a base subserviency, fling itself at the feet of a mon-
arch or a minister ; it might in a season of exhaustion allow the
slow persistence of the Lords, ever eying it as Lancelot was eyed
by Modred, to invade its just province by baffling its action at
some time propitious for the purpose. But no constitution can
anywhere keep either sovereign, or Assembly, or nation, true to
its trust and to itself. All that can be done has been done. The

204 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

Commons are armed with ample powers of self-defense. If they
use their powers properly, they can only be mastered by a recur-
rence to the people, and the way in which the appeal takes effect
is by the choice of another House of Commons more agreeable
to the national temper. Thus the sole appeal from the verdict
of the House is a rightful appeal to those from whom it received
its commission.

This superiority in power among the state forces was in truth
established even before the House of Commons became what it
now is, representative of the people throughout its entire area.
In the early part of the century a large part of its members vir-
tually received their mandate from members of the peerage, or
from the crown, or by the direct action of money on a mere
handful of individuals, or, as in Scotland, for example, from con-
stituencies whose limited numbers and upper-class sympathies
usually shut out popular influences. A real supremacy belonged
to the House as a whole ; but the forces of which it was com-
pounded were not all derived from the people, and the aristo-
cratic power had found out the secret of asserting itself within
the walls of the popular Chamber, in the dress and through the
voices of its members. Many persons of gravity and weight saw
great danger in a change like the first Reform Act, which left it
to the Lords to assert themselves thereafter by an external force,
instead of through a share in the internal composition of a body
so formidable. But the result proved that they were sufficiently
to exercise, through the popular will and choice, the power
which they had formerly put in action without its sanction,
though within its proper precinct and with its title falsely in-
scribed.

The House of Commons is superior, and by far superior, in
the force of its political attributes, to any other single power in
the state. But it is watched ; it is criticised ; it is hemmed in
and about by a multitude of other forces : the force, first of all,
of the House of Lords, the force of opinion from day to day,
particularly of the highly anti-popular opinion of the leisured
men of the metropolis, who, seated close to the scene of action,
wield an influence greatly in excess of their just claims; the
force of the classes and professions ; the just and useful force of
the local authorities in their various orders and places. Never

Em BEYOFD SEA. 205

was the great problem more securely solved, which recognizes
the necessity of a paramount power in the body politic to enable
it to move, but requires for it a depositary such that it shall be
safe against invasion, and yet inhibited from aggression.

The old theories of a mixed government, and of the three
powers, coming down from the age of Cicero, when set by the
side of the living British Constitution, are cold, crude, and insuf-
ficient, to a degree that makes them deceptive. There is still
lacking an amalgam, a reconciling power, what may be called a
clearing-house of political forces, which shall receive into itself
everything, and shall balance and adjust everything, and, ascer-
taining the net result, let it pass on freely for the fulfillment of
the purposes of the great social union. Like a stout buffer-
spring, it receives all shocks, and within it their opposing ele-
ments neutralize one another. This is the function of the Brit-
ish cabinet. It is perhaps the most curious formation in the
political world of modern times, not for its dignity, but for its
subtilty, its elasticity, and its many-sided diversity of power.
It is the complement of the entire system ; which appears to
want nothing but a thorough loyalty in the persons composing
its several parts, with a reasonable intelligence, to insure its
bearing, without fatal damage, the wear and tear of ages yet to
come.

It has taken more than a couple of centuries to bring the
British cabinet to its present accuracy and fullness of develop-
ment ; for the first rudiments of it may perhaps be discerned in
the reign of Charles I. Under Charles II. it had fairly started
from its embryo ; and the name is found in the contemporary
diary of Pepys. It was for a long time without a ministerial
head ; the king was the head. While this arrangement subsisted
constitutional government could be but half established. Of the
numerous titles of the Kevolution of 1688 to respect, not the
least remarkable is this, that the great families of the country,
and great powers of the state, made no effort, as they might have
done, in the hour of its weakness, to aggrandize themselves at
the expense of the crown. Nevertheless, for various reasons,
and, among them, because of the foreign origin, and absences
from time to time, of several sovereigns, the course of events
tended to give force to the organs of government actually on the

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spot, and thus to consolidate, and also to uplift, this as yet novel
creation. So late, however, as the impeachment of Sir Robert
Walpole, his friends thought it expedient to urge on his behalf
in the House of Lords that he had never presumed to consti-
tute himself a prime-minister.

The breaking down of the great offices of state by throwing
them into commission, and last among them of the Lord High
Treasurership after the time of Harley, Earl of Oxford, tended,
and may probably have been meant, to prevent or retard the for-
mation of a recognized chiefship in the ministry, which even now
we have not learned to designate by a true English word, though
the use of the imported phrase " premier " is at least as old as
the poetry of Burns. Nor can anything be more curiously char-
acteristic of the political genius of the people than the present
position of this most important official personage. Departmen-
tally, he is no more than the first named of five persons, by whom
jointly the powers of the Lord Treasurership are taken to be ex-
ercised ; he is not their master, or, otherwise than by mere pri-
ority, their head ; and he has no special function or prerogative
under the formal constitution of the office. He has no official
rank, except that of a privy councilor. Eight members of the
cabinet, including five Secretaries of State, and several other
members of the Government, take official precedence of him.
His rights and duties as head of the administration are nowhere
recorded. He is almost, if not altogether, unknown to the stat-
ute law.

Nor is the position of the body over which he presides less
singular than his own. The cabinet wields, with partial excep-
tions, the powers of the Privy Council, besides having a standing-
ground, in relation to the personal will of the sovereign, far be-
yond what the Privy Council ever held or claimed. Yet it has
no connection with the Privy Council, except that every one, on
first becoming a member of the cabinet, is, if not belonging to it
already, sworn a member of that body. There are other sections
of the Privy Council, forming regular committees for education
and for trade. But the cabinet has not even this degree of
formal sanction to sustain its existence. It lives and acts sim-
ply by understanding, without a single line of written law or con-
stitution to determine its relations to the monarch, or to the

EIN BEYOND SEA. 207

Parliament, or to the nation ; or the relations of its members to
one another, or to their head. It sits in the closest secrecy.
There is no record of its proceedings, nor is there any one to
hear them, except upon the very rare occasions when some im-
portant functionary, for the most part military or legal, is in-
troduced, pro hac vice, for the purpose of giving to it necessary
information.

Every one of its members acts in no less than three capacities :
as administrator of a department of state ; as member of a legis-
lative chamber ; and as a confidential adviser of the crown. Two
at least of them add to those three characters a fourth ; for, in
each House of Parliament, it is indispensable that one of the prin-
cipal ministers should be what is termed its leader. This is an
office the most indefinite of all, but not the least important. With
very little of defined prerogative, the leader suggests, and in a
great degree fixes, the course of all principal matters of busi-
ness, supervises and keeps in harmony the action of his colleagues,
takes the initiative in matters of ceremonial procedure, and ad-
vises the House in every difficulty as it arises. The first of these,
which would be of but secondary consequence where the Assembly
had time enough for all its duties, is of the utmost weight in our
overcharged House of Commons, where, notwithstanding all its
energy and all its diligence, for one thing of consequence that is
done, five or ten are despairingly postponed. The overweight,
again, of the House of Commons is apt, other things being equal,
to bring its leader inconveniently near in power to a prime-
minister, who is a peer. He can play off the House of Com-
mons against his chief ; and instances might be cited, though
they are happily most rare, when he has served him very ugly
tricks.

The nicest of all the adjustments involved in the working of
the British Government is that which determines, without for-
mally defining, the internal relations of the cabinet. On the one
hand, while each minister is an adviser of the crown, the cabinet
is a unity, and none of its members can advise as an individual,
without, or in opposition actual or presumed to, his colleagues.
On the other hand, the business of the state is a hundred-fold
too great in volume to allow of the actual passing of the whole
under the view of the collected ministry. It is therefore a prime

208 THE NORTE AMERICAN REVIEW.

office of discretion for each minister to settle what are the depart-
mental acts in which he can presume the concurrence of his
colleagues, and in what more delicate, or weighty, or peculiar
cases he must positively ascertain it. So much for the relation of
each minister to the cabinet ; but here we touch the point which
involves another relation, perhaps the least known of all, his re-
lation to its head.

The head of the British Government is not a grand-vizier ;
he has no powers, properly so called, over his colleages ; on the
rare occasions when a cabinet determines its course by the votes
of its members, his vote counts only as one of theirs. But they
are appointed and dismissed by the sovereign on his advice. In a
perfectly-organized administration, such for example as was that of
Sir Bobert Peel in 1841-46, nothing of great importance is ma-
tured, or would even be projected, in any department without his
personal cognizance ; and any weighty business would commonly
go to him before being submitted to the cabinet. He reports to
the sovereign its proceedings, and he also has many audiences of
the august occupant of the throne. He is bound, in these reports
and audiences, not to counterwork the cabinet ; not to divide it ;
not to undermine the position of any of his colleagues in the royal
favor. If he departs in any degree from strict adherence to
these rules, and uses his great opportunities to increase his own
influence, or pursue aims not shared by his colleagues, then, unless
he is prepared to advise their dismissal, he not only departs from
rule, but commits an act of treachery and base*ness. As the cab-
inet stands between the sovereign and the Parliament, and is
bound to be loyal to both, so he stands between his colleagues and
the sovereign, and is bound to be loyal to both.

As a rule, the resignation of the first minister, as if removing
the bond of cohesion in the cabinet, has the effect of dissolving it.
A conspicuous instance of this was furnished by Sir Bobert Peel
in 1846, when the dissolution of the administration, after it had
carried the repeal of the Corn Laws, was understood to be due
not so much to a united deliberation and decision as to his ini-
tiative. The resignation of any other minister only creates a
vacancy. In certain circumstances, the balance of forces may be
so delicate and susceptible that a single resignation will break up
the Government ; but what is the rule in the one case is the rare

KIN BEYOND SEA. 209

exception in the other. The prime-minister has no title to over-
ride any one of his colleagues in any one of the departments. So
far as he governs them, unless it is done by trick, which is not
to be supposed, he governs them by influence only. Upon the
whole, nowhere in the wide world does so great a substance
cast so small a shadow ; nowhere is there a man who has so
much power, and so little to show for it in the way of formal
title or prerogative.

The slight record that has here been traced may convey but
a faint idea of a unique creation. Yet, slight as it is, I believe it
tells more than, except in the school of British practice, is else-
where to be learned of a machine so subtly balanced that it
seems as though it were moved by something as delicate and
slight as the main-spring of a watch. It has not been the off-
spring of the thought of man. The cabinet, and all the present
relations of the constitutional powers in this country, have
grown into their present dimensions, and settled into their pres-
ent places, not as the fruit of a philosophy, not in the effort to
give effect to an abstract principle ; but by the silent action of
forces, invisible and insensible, the structure has come up into
the view of all the world. It is, perhaps, the most conspicuous
object on the wide political horizon ; but it has thus risen, without
noise, like the Temple of Jerusalem.

" No workman steel, no ponderous hammers rung ;
Like some tall palm the stately fabric sprung." *

When men repeat the proverb which teaches us that " mar-
riages are made in heaven," what they mean is that, in the most
fundamental of all social operations, the building up of the fam-
ily, the issues involved in the nuptial contract lie beyond the best
exercise of human thought, and the unseen forces of providential
government make good the defect in our imperfect capacity.
Even so would it seem to have been in that curious marriage of
competing influences and powers, which brings about the com-
posite harmony of the British Constitution. More, it must be
admitted, than any other, it leaves open doors which lead into
blind alleys ; for it presumes, more boldly than any other, the

* "Heberis Palestina."

210 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

good sense and good faith of those who work it. If, unhappily,
these personages meet together, on the great arena of a nation's
fortunes, as jockeys meet upon a race-course, each to urge to the
uttermost, as against the others, the power of the animal he
rides, or as counsel in a court, each to procure the victory of his
client without respect to any other interest or right — then this
boasted Constitution of ours is neither more nor less than a heap
of absurdities. The undoubted competency of each reaches even
to the paralysis or distraction of the rest. The House of Com-
mons is entitled to refuse every shilling of the supplies. That
House, and also the House of Lords, is entitled to refuse its assent
to every bill presented to it. The crown is entitled to make a
thousand peers to-day and as many to-morrow ; it may dissolve
all and every Parliament before it proceeds to business ; may par-
don the most atrocious crimes ; may declare war against all the
world ; may conclude treaties involving unlimited responsibilities,
and even vast expenditure, without the consent, nay, without the
knowledge, of Parliament, and this not merely in support or in
development, but in reversal, of policy already known to and
sanctioned by the nation. But the assumption is that the deposi-
taries of power will all respect one another ; will evince a con-
sciousness that they are working in a common interest for a com-
mon end ; that they will be possessed together with not less than
an average intelligence, of not less than an average sense of
equity and of the public interest and rights. "When these remark-
able expectations fail, then, it must be admitted, the British Con-
stitution will be in danger.

Apart from such contingencies, the offspring only of folly or
of crime, this Constitution is peculiarly liable to subtile change.
Not only in the long-run, as man changes between youth and
age, but also, like the human body, with a quotidian life, a pe-
riodical recurrence of ebbing and flowing tides. Its old parti-
cles daily run to waste, and give place to new. What is
hoped among us is that which has usually been found, that
evils will become palpable before they have grown to be intol-
erable.

There cannot, for example, be much doubt, among careful
observers, that the great conservator of liberty in all former
times, namely, the confinement of the power of the purse to the

KIN BEYOND SEA. 211

popular Chamber, has been lamentably weakened in its efficiency
of late years — weakened in the House of Commons, and weakened
by the House of Commons. It might, indeed, be contended that
the House of Commons of the present epoch does far more to in-
crease the aggregate of public charge than to reduce it. It might
even be a question whether the public would take benefit if the
House were either intrusted annually with a great part of the
initiative, so as to be really responsible to the people for the
spending of their money, or else were excluded from part, at
least, of its direct action upon expenditure, intrusting to the ex-
ecutive the application of given sums, which that executive
should have no legal power to exceed.

Meantime we of this island are not great political philos-
ophers ; and we contend with an earnest, but disproportioned,
"vehemence about changes which are palpable, such as the ex-
tension of the suffrage, or the redistribution of parliamentary
seats, neglecting wholly other processes of change which work
beneath the surface, and in the dark, but which are even more
fertile of great organic results. The modern English character
reflects the English Constitution in this, that it abounds in
paradox; that it possesses every strength, but holds it tainted
with every weakness; that it seems alternately both to rise
above, and to fall below, the standards of average humanity;
that there is no allegation of praise or blame which, in some
one of the aspects of its many-sided formation, it does not de-
serve ; that only in the midst of much default, and much trans-
gression, the people of this United Kingdom either have hereto-
fore established, or will hereafter establish, their title to be reck-
oned among the children of men for the eldest-born of an im-
perial race.

In this imperfect survey I have carefully avoided all reference
to the politics of the day and to particular topics, recently opened,
which may have undergone a great development before these
lines appear in print on the other side of the Atlantic. Such
reference would, without any countervailing advantage, have
lowered the strain of these remarks, and would have complicated
with painful considerations a statement essentially impartial and
general in its scope.

For the yet weightier reason of incompetency, I have avoided
vol. cxxvn. — no. 264. 15

212 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

the topics of chief present interest in America, including that
proposal to tamper with the true monetary creed, which the
Tempter lately presented to the nation in the Silver Bill. But I
will not close this paper without recording my conviction that
the great acts, and the great forbearances, which immediately fol-
lowed the close of the civil war, form a group which will ever be
a noble object, in his political retrospect, to the impartial his-
torian ; and that, proceeding as they did from the free choice and
conviction of the people, and founded as they were on the very
principles of which the multitude is supposed to be least tolerant,
they have, in doing honor to the United States, also rendered
a splendid service to the general cause of popular government
throughout the world.

W. E. Gladstone.
July 26, 18T8.